Well, since I brought it up, and you ask the direct question, I have to admit that I don’t routinely wear a hat from day to day. My work is in offices where a hat does cause some hilarity, even when I just wear one when it’s raining… and it’s one more thing to keep track of. I wear one to work infrequently, and then it’s usually a Stetson felt fedora, with a thin contrasting band so I don’t look like an Indiana Jones wannabee- I hope. The shoulder pouch adds to that problem. I avoid wearing either with bomber-style jackets.<br><br>I have a selection of fedoras in felt and canvas, some boonies and “the” Tilley, and a few baseball-type caps in the closet. <br><br>I’m not fond of baseball caps- the only time I wear them is in very cold or wet weather, under a parka hood, because the bill turns the hood opening with my head.. and when shooting outside, where the bill is welcome but a full brim interferes with hearing protectors. Other than that, they let the sun burn the tops of your ears and the back of your neck. Useless. <br><br>The closed-cell foam panel in the crown of a Tilley hat (and some of the imitations) is not just for floatation, but it also takes over the insulation value of a high crown against the beating sun while still letting it roll up or crush for packing. I found this out the hard way, by removing the foam panel and then discovering how much hotter the hat was in the sun. Funny they don’t mention that.<br><br>A trip to Hawaii and a rented convertible reminded me painfully a few years ago that my hair up top is thinner than it used to be, in a spot that I almost never see. I repeated the mistake, less severely, on the beach in Bermuda. Sunburned scalp is not fun.<br><br>It's not easy to wear a hat in the city or suburbs anymore. I mentioned that the fashion for men NOT wearing hats started when JFK refused to wear a Homburg to his inauguration. Detroit almost immediately took advantage of the situation (look at the model years) to lower the roofs on cars, thus saving themselves money in steel and glass (nobody cared about aerodynamics then), and making it much harder to go back to wearing hats. Since then, a hat inside a vehicle has been a problem- ask any State Trooper- especially if you’re 6’2” like me. John Wayne had cars specially built so he could enter without taking his hat off.<br><br>Most actors, though, found that if they didn't wear a hat their face was more conspicuous in more scenes, and then it was all over. Even in movies where men SHOULD be wearing hats (because of the date or setting) they make at most a token appearance, because the actors won’t stand for having their faces blocked or shadowed- revisionist Hollywood history, like the movies set in the '30s and '40s where NOBODY smokes. Silly.<br><br>Hollywood and TV dictate fashion more than we’d like to admit, and so we still aren’t wearing hats today, despite hundreds of generations that knew better. It’s hard to even find a restaurant with a hatrack handy anymore, though they used to be universal.<br><br>As much as I value a hat, knowing how to use one means knowing when to remove it as much as when to wear it… but in the city having one “in hand” feels even sillier and more conspicuous than wearing one, and there are many more circumstances where it’s suddenly too hot to reasonably keep it on. Then there’s the wonderful things it does to your hair. It’s much less of a hassle outside of a city.<br><br>In my defense, I do always have at least one hat in the vehicle. There’s a light canvas floppy with a rope sewn to the brim in my vehicle emergency kit. I take the Tilley whenever I’m planning on walking more than a few miles (this is wooded, shady country, not like much of the West), on all trips out of town, always in a boat, and often just when I don’t know where the day might take me. I also keep a synthetic fleece ski-style cap (sort of a watch cap that lies flat) in the flap pocket of my shoulder pouch at all times. <br><br>The only time my grandfather came to visit, from thousands of miles away and not long before his death, he politely praised the house and possessions, but I think the only thing that truly impressed him was that I had a fedora that almost matched his. He still felt that a real gentleman would not leave the house without one.<br>